 Create Workforce Efficiency while Managing Employee
The Small Business Success Myth – Working For Myself Will Make Me Rich and Free
Why working the way most business owners work will result in stress, struggle and survival at best, if not total failure, and what the few truly successful business owners do differently to create a business that really works, giving them all the money, time and freedom to live the life of their dreams.
When we consider the statistics of small business failures we must recognize that the promises of fame and fortune if you start your own business must be a myth. A vast majority of these businesses fail totally or simply fail to prosper.
Why do we do it to ourselves?
The potential rewards of owning your own business are very attractive. We can work in areas that we enjoy, often utilising skills or interests that our current employer does not seem to value sufficiently.
We get the opportunity to do our own thing, see the fruition of a long held dream or an idea that we are quietly hoping could be the next “Post-it Note,” “Google” or “Nike.” Even better, we can do it our way! No longer will we have to work under some-one else’s rules and silly regulations. We have seen the pitfalls and inefficiencies of our employer and feel, “If that fool can do it – imagine how much better we can do it!”
Finally there is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – the potential for unlimited wealth and time freedom. We imagine late starts and early finishes, the holidays, the houses and cars and we KNOW it is now within our reach.
As we take the step towards our bright shiny future and our fantastically successful business we are filled with hope, anticipation and excitement. We are encouraged by the success stories of the moguls who started their multimillion dollar venture at their kitchen table and now live lives of luxury and leisure.
We gloss over or ignore the horror stories of failure and people losing the shirts off their backs, because we know we are the lucky ones, the clever ones, our idea is better, we are smarter, it’s never going to happen to me.
Then reality hits, if we do manage to survive the first year in business, unlike the 50% or more who don’t – we are more than likely living the life of our nightmares, rather than the bright shiny dream world we had imagined we would be inhabiting.
Studies consistently show that small business owners tend to work longer hours, for less pay than their employees and also than when they were employed. The stress of juggling sales tasks, producing the product or service, managing cashflow, creditors, debtors, the tax department, employee relationships and family relationships is enormous.
The business owner keeps on going – waiting for the next big order, the market to turn, the big account to come in – often the only reason to keep going is that the business is too far in debt to stop and it seems that the only way out of the nightmare is to keep trying to move forward. Sometimes the big reward seems tantalizingly close – the next order, the new fad, the next ad campaign, so the business owner keeps on going just that little bit longer, borrowing just a little more money, or explaining that s/he will only keep on working the 80 hours plus per week for the next month or two.
What went wrong? We are living in highly competitive business environments and having to deal with well-educated customers, government regulations that seem to favour employees, customers and lobby groups. These conditions are not the same conditions that our predecessors had to deal with. Technological advancements mean that we now have the opportunities to operate our businesses globally, but it is difficult to wade through the information to find out how to do that successfully, while trying to run our business.
Most business owners are experts in their trade or area of interest. The business management techniques they have learnt consist mainly of watching their previous employers and using that as a guide as to what to do and what not to do. This just perpetuates the same results, the business grows to a point that it becomes chaotic because the systems and cashflow are not in place to manage growth. The vision and excitement that heralded the start of the business is lost and the business becomes a drain on resources and a chore to work in.
How do we avoid these pitfalls? How do we escape the norm of the business that never grows successfully? How do we emulate those few successful entrepreneurs who seem to break the mold and create astonishingly successful businesses?
Studies and experience show that there are 7 key principles that successful entrepreneurs apply and if you work on those principles consistently, you can keep winning in your quest to establish and run a successful business. The critical difference between the successful and the normal business is that successful entrepreneurs develop their businesses into sustainable, profitable operations that work without them having to be involved in the day to day running. That factor is critical because until your business works without you, you still have a job. However, when your business finally does work without you, you have built a value and wealth creation vehicle.
For a true entrepreneur, the business is the product. The business is the machine that produces the products or services. The only reason for the entrepreneur to work in the business is to discover how the business works best and to create the systems that will become the foundation for future growth. That should be the goal of any business owner starting a business, and once that job is done, it is time to step out of the operational processes and get into the driver’s seat where strategy and direction become the priority. Just like any other product or machine manufacturing process, there are a series of steps that need to be taken from conceptualization to completion. In the autopilot business development process, these steps are relevant to the 7 key principles we spoke about earlier. These 7 steps are:
- Take Charge
- Plan for Autopilot Stage and Beyond
- Build a Sales Escalator
- Create Systems to Remove Dependency
- Build a Self-Reliant Team
- Develop Your Control Mechanisms
- Break Free without Fear
Although each of these steps is a separate element in the process, they are not necessarily sequential. Work needs to be done in each area concurrently. In project management terms, the time lines overlap. To work on each of these steps is challenging, sometimes frustrating, sometimes takes courage and discipline, but will soon be very rewarding. Putting your business on autopilot is the key to business success. Unless you focus on developing your business and endeavour to put it on autopilot, your prospects of success will always remain a myth. There is no other way to succeed.
These principles and steps to create a business that works on autopilot are detailed in the breakthrough new book, Put Your Business on Autopilot, by successful entrepreneur, Greg Roworth. Greg writes from the experience of having created and sold three successful businesses, including a business consulting firm that he took international. This content of this book is the most significant development in the small and medium business field in recent years and is sure to play a major role in the ongoing education of the next wave of successful business entrepreneurs. Make sure you are one of them by getting your copy of Put Your Business on Autopilot, available now at www.autopilotbusinessplan.com/order.html.
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